Indonesian Arrival

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Arrived in Jakarta after a delay and one of those amazing small-world coincidences that happen sometimes while traveling.

I expected to have a fairly short Shanghai-Manila-Jakarta connection. Delayed in Shanghai, I missed my connection in Manila with the only option a brief overnight followed by an early flight to Singapore connecting to an onward flight to Jakarta.

On arriving back at the Manila airport early in the morning, I was sitting at the other end of the terminal from my departure gate when I heard my name. An acquaintance from San Francisco happened to be connecting to a flight to Bangkok and had seen me fiddling with my mobile. What are the chances? A missed flight, hanging at the opposite end of the terminal from my departure gate and an unexpected meet up with a friend. That shifted my mood a bit about the inconvenience of my missed connection and arriving in Jakarta a day later than planned.

Was met at the airport by a driver arranged by my bed and breakfast which is located outside of Central Jakarta in Tomang, South Jakarta. The one thing clear on the trip from the airport is the chaos that is Jakarta traffic. The second thing that became clear is the warren that is the neighborhood I’ve chosen to stay in. My driver, who knows the bed and breakfast well, followed various small streets in circles to avoid the traffic jams that seemed unavoidable.

The Tomang neighborhood. If walking just a couple of blocks in either direction, it’s a relatively quiet neighborhood with narrow streets and the relative quiet interrupted regularly by calls to prayer from the nearby mosque. Walk just a few more blocks in one direction and you cross over an 8 lane road to two enormous shopping malls. Another direction, it’s another 8 lane road with traffic all hours.

Both roads are also on the most effective public transportation in the city, the Transjakarta bus system…dedicated lanes along key roadways.

Turns out to be a perfect neighborhood. Easy access to the sights, great street food and the malls for an escape from all of that.

Jakarta isn’t a tourist city. There’s very little worth seeing. There’s the National Monument and the associated museum, which tells the history of Indonesia in a series of dioramas. There’s the Jakarta Museum, which is supposed to be great, but I wasn’t in the mood, and the old center of town during Dutch colonial times. It’s a small area, but comes alive late afternoons and evenings. The proof of the lack of Jakarta attractions is the few photos I realize I took while in town. Most of my time was spent just walking around and making plans for my Java journey.

On the history, a few surprises. First, Indonesia has the 4th largest population of any country in the world. That population is spread over 6,000 inhabited islands. It was a Dutch colony as part of the Dutch East India Company holdings, then British in the early 1800s as part of British East India’s holdings, then the Dutch again, then occupied by Japan, then declared independence only to have to fight off an armed and diplomatic struggle by the Netherlands to reassert their rule. Independence was recognized in 1949. There have been dictators and coups. The first direct presidential election was in 2004.

The other surprise is that people seem always to be friendly. I’ve been greeted with “hellos” frequently and haven’t run into the scams I was expecting.

A good start to the Java trip, but the traffic, air quality and lack of any real attractions make this a short stay. Time to move on.

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